Paul Raymond, the controversial entrepreneur who became Britain's richest man

"Not bad for a lad from Liverpool who arrived with five bob in his pocket."

Paul Raymond, the controversial entrepreneur who became Britain's richest man Art-743722818-620x349

Paul Raymond, the controversial entrepreneur who became Britain's richest man Art-743722818-620x349

As strip-club impresario Paul Raymond in Michael Winterbottom's film The Look of Love, Steve Coogan says this line more than once. Raymond is a spiv, pumped with his own success and the A-grade coke it allows him to buy, but he wants his acumen noted and respected. By the time he says it the second time, he is the richest man in Britain. There's a lot of money in bare breasts.

As a pornographer, Raymond was never going to be embraced by the Establishment.

The real Paul Raymond died five years ago, aged 83. He had started his life in showbiz as a fifth-rate magician in end-of-the-pier shows. "I think when he began, it was as it says in the film: putting a girl with no top on next to him in order to make people come and watch his mind-reading act," Winterbottom says. Raymond hit London with his five bob in 1958; under the obscenity laws of the time, women could appear naked on stage only if they didn't move. He would soon challenge that and several other laws with the glitzy displays of flesh at the Raymond Revuebar. "He saw himself as trying to import continental sophistication to London," Winterbottom says. It wasn't just voyeurism. "They were putting on a show."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/the-king-of-cravings-20130620-2ojtp.html#ixzz2Wv1o0kta

Paul Raymond, the controversial entrepreneur who became Britain's richest man

Paul Raymond, the controversial entrepreneur who became Britain's richest man

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